taste of science: RWC STEAM Festival

A Model, A Mannequin & A Mirror: Simple Methods to Step Outside Yourself

We often take our sense of self for granted. We do not doubt that our body is our own, or attribute our sensations to other people. Yet there are many neurological conditions and artificially contrived laboratory situations in which this very assumption can be called into question. We’ll demo some of these methods to disrupt our body image, creating out-of-body experiences easy enough to replicate at home.

Speaker: Elizabeth Seckel, Stanford

Protein Speed Dating using Virtual Reality

Physical interactions between proteins are what keeps our cells functioning. Understanding the 3D structure of protein interactions is a step towards understanding ourselves, as well as to the development of better medicine. Computers can help predict these structures but humans can do better, even without scientific training. To this end, we develop tools using VR technology that exploit our innate spatial reasoning to create 3D models of protein interactions. Can you do better than a computer?